Pashinian brought more clarity on possible referendum dates during a congress of his ruling Civil Contract party. He declared that the party will turn the country into a “fourth republic of Armenia” in case of winning the elections.
“After receiving the people’s vote of confidence in the elections, Civil Contract will initiate a process of adopting the new constitution of the Republic of Armenia through a national referendum,” he said in a 90-minute speech.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reiterated, meanwhile, that Baku will not sign an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty without a change of the Armenian constitution which it says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
The treaty was initialed during Pashinian’s August 8 meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. Aliyev expressed confidence later in August that Armenia will change its constitution to meet his main precondition for peace.
While rejecting the precondition in public, Pashinian pledged last year to enact a new constitution. He reaffirmed those plans after the Washington summit.
Baku specifically wants Yerevan to remove a constitutional preamble that mentions Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence, which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. The only legal way to do that is to adopt a new constitution through a referendum.
Armenian opposition groups have pledged to mobilize voters to reject the new constitution. Not surprisingly, they scoffed at Pashinian’s declared plans to create the “fourth republic.”
“The proclamation of the ‘fourth republic’ by Nikol Pashinian is just an attempt to erase from the public consciousness the responsibility and guilt that he and his Civil Contract bear for the disasters they have brought upon our people,” said Levon Zurabian of the opposition Armenian National Congress. “It is also a solemn smokescreen under which he wants to fulfill Azerbaijan's demands regarding the change of our constitution.”